North of Brunswick the Altamaha River estuary spreads across the land in a labyrinth of sawgrass and water behind the barrier islands that protect the marsh from the Atlantic Ocean to the east. Fingers of dry land pierce the marsh here and there with minimal roads crossing the wildlife paradise. Hwy 17 is the traditional path around the estuary, I-95 is a more direct route. Of course, I chose to wander along Hwy 17!
Just 15 minutes north of Brunswick is the Hofwyl-Broadfield plantation, maintained by the state of Georgia to provide a “real” picture of coastal plantation life. The plantation started in 1806 when Charleston merchant William Brailsford carved a rice plantation out of the cypress swamps along the Altahama River and named it Broadfield. The plantation remained in the family until 1973 when the last descendant of the family, Ophelia Dent, passed. In her will she left the plantation to the state of Georgia. Five generations of the same family owned the land and their history mirrored the rise and fall of rice plantation life. In the early 1800s slaves were imported from the Gullah tribes of Sierra Leone and Gambia in western Africa because they were knowledgeable about growing rice and were believed to have a genetic resistance to malaria. The plantation covered a peninsula surrounded by marsh on three sides. The cypress trees were cleared and a series of canals and gates controlled water flow to the rice fields. The housing complex, consisted of the owner’s house, slave quarters, and farm buildings was on slightly higher ground at the upper center of this model of the plantation.
Rice plantations were significantly different from the cotton plantations to the west, there was no grand main house at Broadfield. The white owners were extremely susceptible to the diseases around the marsh, particularly malaria and yellow fever, so they did not actually live on the plantation for the six months of the year in spring and summer. Owners lived in town houses (in this area that meant a house in Savannah) and the plantation was run by black overseers and the slaves. The blacks developed their own language, called “Geechee” so that they could communicate secretly without the white owners understanding the conversation. By 1849 Broadfield had expanded to 7,300 acres and 357 slaves. In the early 1850’s the name of the plantation was altered to Hofwyl-Broadfield in honor of George Dent, who married into the family and had attended school at Hofwyl in Switzerland. The Civil War changed the plantation life forever. Growing rice profitably depended upon slave labor, once that was gone and those who remained had to be paid, the plantation quickly became mired in debt. The family now lived at Hofwyl-Broadfield year round. Large sections of the land had to be sold and by the 1880s the wealth of Hofwyl-Broadfield was gone, the rice fields reverting back to the marsh. The family struggled on until 1913 when Gratz Dent, one of three children who were the last generation of the family, established a dairy on what was left of the plantation. The dairy was moderately successful, allowing the Dent children to pay off the remaining debt and by 1942 when the dairy closed the plantation was debt-free. Ophelia Dent, the last remaining descendant of William Brailsford, became close friends with the DuPont family and received some financial assistance from them in the post-World War II years to help maintain her home. The house was one of the few Georgia coastal plantation homes to survive the Civil War and has experienced minimal alterations, possessions from five generations of the family still furnish the house.
The visitor center is about a quarter of a mile from the plantation house, one walks through a dramatic world of magnificent oak trees and dramatic Spanish moss towards the main complex.
Occasionally an opening in the forest gives a glimpse of the marsh beyond, now reclaimed from the rice fields that once existed there.
The simple main house looks out over a broad lawn to the marsh beyond, support buildings are out back.
Due to virus restrictions the tour was quite limited, just a quick walk around the L-shaped first floor (the screened porch fills out the rectangle.) Once through the screened porch, one enters the central hall. There are only three rooms on the main floor, the entire interior is furnished just as it was at the time of Miss Ophelia’s death in 1973.
In the front to the right is the dining room, to the left is the parlor.
The other room in the first floor is Miss Ophelia’s bedroom, with a small attached bath that also served as her private walkway out into the back of the house. The door to the bathroom was purposely built small as Miss Ophelia did not want any “large” men using her bathroom.
The back view of the main house shows first the attached kitchen and then a series of rooms designed for various purposes.
This photograph from 1901 shows how few changes have taken place over time.
One slave cabin from the pre-Civil War era remains. Slave cabins on Hofwyl-Broadfield were small, simple buildings sparsely furnished, built in a duplex design with two quarters built on either side of a shared chimney.
Each side has three rooms, two opening off of a main room that contained the chimney.
The other side had an identical layout. As noted earlier, the last function of the plantation was as a dairy. The barn, milking shed and bottling house stand side by side near the main house.
Also nearby is the ice house and garage. The icehouse originally was a smokehouse where meat was preserved in the 1800s but was converted to an ice house in 1913 when the Dent’s began their dairy. The ice house was needed to keep the milk cool. A “room within a room” was built of brick inside the smokehouse with the space between the new brick wall and the old smokehouse wall filled with sawdust for insulation. The ice blocks were then placed inside the brick room. In 1930 a garage was added to the north end to house Miss Ophelia’s car.
An interesting look a “real” plantation life. Back on the road headed north we weave in and out of marsh and forest.
Midway
Midway is a small village on a narrow rise in the marsh, founded by English Puritans in 1754. Settlers in this area had a strong political stance and took an early stand for independence in May of 1775. Two of Georgia’s three signers of the Declaration of Independence were from Midway. The center of the community was the Midway Congregational Church, founded in 1754, burned by the British in 1776, and rebuilt in 1792 and still standing today. In 1957 a small museum was built next the church, unfortunately closed on the day I visit. Across the street is the historic cemetery, established by the settlers around the same time that the church was founded.
North of Midway our path continues to skirt the marsh until we leave the highway and pierce the dense forest to reach the edge of the marsh at what proves to be a fascinating stop in our journey, Pin Point.
Pin Point
The slaves who worked the rice plantations along the Georgia and Carolina coasts were mostly of Gullah heritage, a tribe from the west of Africa, primarily from present day Sierra Leone and Gambia. They were specifically brought in because of their experience in growing rice. The plantations thrived in the years prior to the Civil War and the slave population developed their own language, called Geechee, in order to communicate in secret from their white owners. The end of the Civil War also ended the slaves’ way of life but many of the freed slaves remained on the islands, living in relative isolation and subsisting off the bounty of the marsh. A series of hurricanes swept the coastal islands in the 1890’s and the Gullah living on Ossabaw and Skidway islands moved to the mainland. The 600 acre Beaulieu Plantation, just 12 miles southeast of Savannah, was seized for debt after the Civil War but because some of it fronted on the salt marsh, parts were not really desirable for farming. Those were made available to freemen for purchase at minimal cost and a group of Gullah settled there in the middle of the marsh, connected to the mainland by a narrow road. The Gullah again lived off the bounty of the marsh and continued to develop their culture in isolation. Shortly after the Gullah settled in Pin Point Ben Bond built the first crab and oyster factory on the marsh and under the guidance of a man named John Anderson it became an important source of income for the community. As modern life crept towards the marsh, the major event in the 20th Century for the Gullah occurred in 1926 when the A.S. Varn and Sons Oyster and Crab Factory opened on the edge of the marsh in Pin Point. The factory complex and associated work supported the Pin Point community until it closed in 1985. Today the small four building complex is a museum where one tours the grounds with the benefit of a guide who weaves the tapestry of experiences that was life in Pin Point during those years.
A narrow one lane road reaches the museum after traversing dense forest and there is barely room for me to park the Lunch Box, clearly not many motor homes visit the museum. I’m able to back in next to the Picking and Cooling House which fronts a small courtyard around which the factory operated. The artwork in the courtyard memorializes the African roots of the community with the blue bottle tree sculpture, mimicking bottle trees that are built to trap evil spirits in the upside down bottles.
The men worked the marsh during the day and brought the crab and oysters back to the factory in the evening. That night the young boys boiled the crab in an enormous kettle in the Crab Boiling Pavilion.
Once cooked the crab was taken into the Cooling and Picking House to cool overnight, waiting for the women to pick the crab the next day.
The picking room is now been converted to a museum but you can see in the back right corner of this picture one of the original four picking tables around which the women sat while they picked the crab.
East of the Picking and Cooling House is the Oyster factory, a long narrow building jutting out into the marsh.
A simple process using the design of the building facilitated the processing of the oysters. The boat full of oysters would pull up and men would shovel the oysters into the open shelf on the outside of the building stretching below the four windows on either side.
Inside the women would stand and as the oysters slid down would crack open the oyster, put the oyster in a gallon bucket at her feet, and discard the shell through a hole in the bottom of the shelf. Oyster shells would pile up outside the building until being loaded into the boats to be taken back out into the marsh and thrown overboard to seed new oyster beds. Once the worker’s gallon bucket was full she would take it to the window in the back right of the picture where she would get credit for completing a bucket and the oysters would be processed for shipping.
Completing the factory was the Deviled Crab House, where small bits of crab that weren’t large enough to be canned in the Picking House would be “deviled”, seasoned with a spicy mix and processed for market.
And, of course, surrounding all is the stunning salt marsh.
One of the most interesting parts of the tour was when our guide led the small (masked!) group in learning some words of Geechee and singing traditional songs.
This is one of those situations where pictures can’t convey the experience, it truly was memorable. Pin Point is the last Gullah community in existence, all of the others up and down the coast have succumbed to modern times, the land sold and community members dispersed. The building of the highway near Pin Point and out onto the outer islands altered the ecosystem of the marsh and made it easier for residents of Pin Point to find better jobs in the greater Savannah community. This contributed to the closing of the factory in 1985.
People who grew up in Pin Point were all given a nickname by which the community knew them. The Thomas family had two boys, “Peanut” and “Boy”, who grew up in the very conservative community steeped in a religion that was a mix of Christianity and African beliefs. One of those young men grew up to be Justice Clarence Thomas, current judge on the United States Supreme Court.
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